Happy (it’s a) new year!

No. 18 – Published 12.31.09 My Thoughts, Exactly By Jim Chase To be painfully honest, I’ve never been so happy to see the end of any given year as I am the one that ends at midnight tonight. On a scale of one-to-ten, 2009 was a big, fat, zero. The year should’ve had Hoover, Dyson, […]

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

ThaNKS EXTENDED TO CLUB MEMBERS As Prom Plus Club president and vice president, we want to thank our club members who volunteered and everyone who made the Prom Plus Dec. 5 home tour a success. We formed our Prom Plus Club at Crescenta Valley High School this year with an emphasis on volunteer opportunities in […]

A Christmas time rhyme

Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the Valley Newspapers were tossed upon driveways and alleys. The locals were frantically trying to wrap up Their shopping by looking for deals they could snap up. But before the big day is upon us at last, Let’s take a quick look at the year that has […]

Duck and Cover!

My fellow columnist Jim Chase wrote a few weeks ago about the air raid sirens that were part of our shared experience growing up in the Crescenta Valley. Jim mentioned in his article that I probably know a little about this subject, and indeed I do! As a matter of fact, we have right here […]

Remembering the gift already given

I don’t know about you, but the holiday season is truly flying by. Focused as I am on work, as of yesterday we still hadn’t gotten a tree. On Tuesday I gave up on getting to the grocery store myself and sent my son to the store to buy all of the ingredients that will […]

Give me … a break

I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that it’s better to give than receive – unless, of course, someone has a three-figure gift card to Bass Pro Shops or Guitar Center with my name on it. I’d happily take something like that off your hands, thank you very much. Other than that, I get considerably […]

The Rocky (Cola) Road To Success

Rocky Cola Café at Honolulu Avenue and Verdugo Boulevard is another of the many gems that make up the “treasures of the valley.” The building Rocky Cola occupies was built in 1923 by the Belanger family as the Montrose Pharmacy. It was the iconic drug store/soda fountain combo that graced so many small town main […]

Letters to the editor

TRIUMPH MEANS MORE THAN TROPHIES The Crescenta Valley High School Falcon Marching Band capped off a season of record-breaking scores with a “personal best” in its final competition. At the prestigious Moorpark “Battle of the Bands” field show tournament on Saturday, Nov. 21, the band earned its highest-ever overall score in a field tournament. The […]

Rain didn’t go away, but ticket holders came anyway

What a stormy couple of days last weekend! I know that I, like most of my foothill neighbors, held my breath anticipating a deluge of mud, rocks and other debris with each rain drop that fell. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. And thankful, too, am I for the many CERT folks, sheriff’s volunteers and others who […]

Driving on the Lanterman Freeway

A fun game my oldest daughter likes to play is to call the freeways of L.A. by their true names. For instance, if we want to get to the beach from La Crescenta, we have a lot of options. We might take the Ronald Reagan Freeway (118) and cut over toward the coast on the […]